That woodpecker could bring down the house, if you can hear it

It’s so noisy out a fella can scarcely hear himself think.

You may seek refuge in the back yard listening for the songbird, but the hedge trimmer has a job to do. The dog barks at the hedge trimmer. The neighbor starts his muscle car. Flee to the middle of Little Lake and the hum of engines and industry trails you into the cattails.

Weed whippers and leaf blowers. Chain saws and trucks backing up beeping. Four wheelers and firecrackers.

Come dawn, a woodpecker works on the chimney, hammering up a headache.

At this age you’re beyond looking for a good time, just some occasional peace and quiet until the next doctor appointment. This is small-town Iowa, not the Big Apple.

Noise can make you ill. It can deafen you. It seeds cardio problems from the stress. People who believe Donald Trump think that wind turbine whir causes everything from bed wetting to ear cancer. We should tamp down the decibels where we can so I can get a nap.

Noise has a place. A baseball announcer’s voice can lull me to sleep within an inning. It’s a comfort sound. The white noise of cable news plays in my background, a weird calming blanket until Trump delivers remarks or all hell breaks loose.

Political noise builds. Did you hear what Ashley Hinson said about Josh Turek? How could you not? He must be a menace. Trump warns of traitors among the Democrats. New Mexico should be New America, Lake Ontario should be Lake America, and we should have a trade war with Canada, our best friend and Iowa’s best customer.

What’s that about? It’s all about the noise, designed to confound so you can’t think straight.

Age tends to focus the mind. When your hearing fades from rock and roll long ago, the jack hammer is not so distracting. We won’t have to put up with this much longer, dude. You latch onto a truth amid this confusion: The geeks who built the robot claim AI could wipe out humanity if we don’t burn up the planet first.

Oh yeah, there’s that.

Instead, let’s talk about how social studies teachers are Marxists. We should know that is fabulously untrue but it blends in among the crow cawing over the air conditioning racket.

One true thing should emerge from the din, if you sit and listen:

We can’t go on like this.

Meta tells us on TV: Everything is gonna be alright because there are people. But the fathers of AI tell us people are doing nothing to make the beast heel. Pretty soon we won’t be able to put a leash on it. If you listen you can hear that doomsday clock — within five years, they warn, it could all go up in smoke or something.

It’s hard to hear for the noise about Marxists and socialists and those damn immigrants. Were it not for the din we would have heard Trump promise the oil cartel the moon and the stars for a campaign contribution. We would have heard Ashley Hinson pledging herself to Trump time and again for the oil and the war (and, implicitly, the profiteering). She says the problem is Washington. Hinson has been there for six years on the feedbag while wars get started without end. She wants you to believe Turek is in the gang with AOC and Mamdani. Right. Fresh from Council Bluffs.

Noise.

Truth is, our rivers are polluted. Our state’s economy is atrophying. Our schools are sliding. Our colleges are threatened. Rural communities are literally being bulldozed. And we might not be able to grow corn south of I-80 in 30 years — if we make it that long.

We who gum our lunch and need better lighting know this midterm could be it. That is not hyperbole. We are engaged in a holy war that we do not fully understand. Trump puts himself on par with the great tyrants of history. AI already is driving warfare around the world. Iowa’s greatest resource, its soil, is flushing down the river to the Gulf of Iowa-Illinois-Indiana. It will not end up well.

Listen to the politicians with the guts to tell you the truth. Hinson is lying through her pearly teeth about Turek because that’s how it is done when you’re in a dead heat. Trump has loosed his purse for these Senate races so the noise will become unbearable for those mesmerized by TV and cellphones.

The noise would have you so numb you think that this day is just like yesterday is like tomorrow, but it is not. While Trump is making up pictures of himself to look like General Patton, an actual war is being fought all over the Middle East without end. A millennial drought grips the Great Plains, and it will get hotter. We can change course but we had better be quick about it. The AI nerds are serious. The clock ticks, if you can hear it, and then the bell tolls.